He didn’t specify which spacing or timing — though a lot of it feels like the spacing of Lowry away from this team entirely, and the timing of Knicks’ owner James Dolan getting desperate enough to allow Raptors GM Masai Ujiri to fleece him for a third consecutive time.

Lowry refuses to engage the matter publicly or privately. As such, there has been no evidence of the fraught stillness that invades locker rooms on the edge.

Even Casey shrugged his way through questions about the matter: “You have to play through that, distractions and all that.”

That’s what’s so odd — they are. They’re better, and not just a little. This team is approaching Western Conference norms of competence.

They no longer march up the court like five strangers who just got stuck together at the Y. The ball moves. For the third consecutive game, they had 20 team assists. They hit that mark three times in the first 18 games with Gay.

Even the second unit — filled with newcomers like Patrick Patterson and Greivis Vasquez — is sharing around with playground ease.

“We’re moving the ball into good shots,” Casey said. “But it’s always been about good defence. That’s never going to change.”

For Casey, it always comes back to defence, moving him to the sin of envy as he observed the Bulls pre-game.

“I’d love to be able to play that way,” he said. “When you play them, it’s a game of will.”

If so, add that quality to the things suddenly in a surplus on the Raptors.

They started out by slipping through the grinding interior cogs of the Bulls. The first quarter ended 24-21. Since they traded Gay, the Raptors have outscored their opponents in every first quarter, by a total of 126-86.

Four games isn’t quite a trend, but neither is it a coincidence.

It’s also not down to a breakout by any one player. If there was a star on the night, it was Patterson (12 points in 20 minutes) and only because he’s not supposed to be up to speed yet.

All the guys who came back from Sacramento are spares rather than premier parts. But maybe they stumbled into something here. Could it really be that in an effort to get worse, the Raptors got better than they’ve been in years?

The Raptors have two real trade chips left — Lowry and Amir Johnson (likely the more valuable of the two).

But where does dumping them for nothing get you now? Put away your dreams of a viable first-round pick. No one is giving that up.

The best you can hope for is expiring deals that translate into cap space next year or picks that pay off well into the future.

If they keep winning in the interim — even a few games could be the difference in the wretched Eastern Conference — we’re into an entirely new calculation. Suddenly, it’s about a so-so first rounder next year and free agents.

Completely unexpectedly, what was supposed to be a way station during an October to June death march has become a demarcation point for the future of this franchise.

It’s December, and they still have three separate ways they can go — short-term (dig in, and push for the playoffs); medium (cap space, and build immediately in the off-season); or long (trade everyone for unprotected picks that won’t be yours for years).

At the management level, they’re still committed to the teardown.

But they never have said exactly what sort of teardown it will be.

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